As most Drupal users already know by now, Drupal 6 is currently at a Release Candidate 3 stage of development. For the Drupal community, this is a time when the developers are wanting people to test, report, and help fix any bugs found in these development version of the Drupal software. At this stage of development, Drupal.org still does not recommend Drupal 6 to be ran on the production server.
As with everything still in development, we do not recommend running release candidates on a live site. Also, always be sure to make a backup of your data before performing any upgrade or starting testing.
Although, I started CMS Report with a beta version of Drupal 4.7, I was a little more cautious when it came time to upgrade to Drupal 5. During the past few months, I've been very cautious in running the site live with Drupal 6 as I haven't wanted to distract visitors to this site from their routine due to a Drupal meltdown.
However, I have found that I'm lousy at testing software if the software is not being used "live". There just isn't the adrenaline rush I need when I play it safe. So I've decided, when time allows, that I'm going to start running my site on Drupal 6 during the weekends.
While some of the contributed modules such as Views and Panels are not yet ready to be used for Drupal 6, I'm amazed and reminded just how much the Drupal Core can support a site such as mine. Just how far along is Drupal 6 RC3? Consider this...I spent my first two hours this evening running with very few problems. To my embarrassment, I realized later in the evening that I wasn't running Drupal 6 RC3, but in fact has accidentally loaded and installed Drupal 6 Beta 3.
So in short, you can expect the site to be running Drupal 6 on weekends. By Monday, I'll restore the site back to Drupal 5 using the backup I'll make just prior to installing Drupal 6. In other words, comments or articles submitted over the weekend may not be preserved once Monday rolls around. Sorry to those visiting that are not interested in Drupal 6...but I really need to have some fun with this site.
9:55 AM Feb 2, 2008
So far haven't found any issues with Drupal core, but have been seeing some issues with the contributed modules and themes. Also, some "leftover" links in the admin menus from previous contributed modules
(such as adsense). Mostly this is affecting cosmetic issues on the admin side and nothing more.
Have had some issues with the Salamander theme not finding all the theme images. Since I don't see an issue on it...wondering if it is an issue on the theme or somewhere else. Investigating...
1040 PM Feb 3, 2008
Restored site back to Drupal 5. Really didn't run into many problems with the Drupal 6 upgrade. As mentioned earlier...the issues I did have were mostly due to contributed modules/themes not quite ready for Drupal 6. Did have some suggestions for improvements in the upgrade instructions...and when less tired will go to drupal.org and comment there. This was fun and glad my backup for Drupal 5 held in one piece...